FATAL LOSSES

Throughout the West and beyond we are witnessing a steep decline in marriage and birth rates. Greece’s birth rate fell by 30 per cent from 2011 to 2021 to under 84,000 per year, slipping below the death rate. Prime Minister Mitsotakis said that in effect the country recorded just one birth per two deaths in 2022. Greece is now facing the possibility of becoming the first contemporary country to experience ‘population collapse’, a sudden and irreversible decline in population.

The depopulation crisis facing the West is not confined geographically but touches those nations heavily influenced by the West. We are all familiar with Japan’s population crisis but it expands beyond rapidly ageing Japan. South Korea, the Western-influenced industrial powerhouse of the Far East, is on track to produce between four and seven great-grandchildren for every 100 Koreans alive today. This equates to a 93-96 per cent reduction in population over the course of a century. No plague or war has ever achieved as much.

GOD IS NOT HENRY FORD

Progressive Christians, intent on enforcing equality in the church, instead sow division. In their desire for absolute equality they remake God as a cosmic Henry Ford who famously told his customers that they could have any colour of Model T ‘as long as it’s black’. But God does not go in for mass production: He is a craftsman and each one of us is unique.

Injustice based on skin colour, sex, age or any of the other discriminations common in our day should be opposed, especially when it appears in the church. But Christians should also be clear on the grounds on which they oppose injustice.

PAGANISM COLONISES THE CHURCH

We are witnessing the collapse of Western Christianity as a culture-creating force. The beliefs and principles upon which the West was built and which it exported to the inestimable benefit of the rest of the world are disappearing in the area in which they took hold to greatest effect. The future of Christianity lies in Africa and Asia, whilst in the West, Europe and the English-speaking nations the Church is fast disappearing.

There is an argument that only the mainstream churches are losing members whilst those who hold to conservative evangelical beliefs are prospering. We must be realistic: apart from a few bright spots on the horizon, most evangelical churches are doing little better than holding their own and much of their growth comes from recycled Christians departing the failing mainstream churches.

THE POWER OF BEAUTY

Why is it that all around us we see the rejection of the beautiful and the celebration of the ugly? The art and architecture of the past, especially our public buildings, featured aesthetics which cause a sense of awe and wonder. They show that in their construction there was artistry, craftsmanship, passion and a yearning for even greater heights. You realise that those who built them and were raised amongst them had a sense of belonging and looked towards a better future.

Canterbury Cathedral

When we look at much of today’s architecture we find brutalism and featureless ugliness. So soulless are they that they are rarely maintained well and often become shelters for drunks and drug addicts before they are pulled down. The most interesting and colourful aspects of them are the graffiti on their surfaces.

WAKE UP TO THE REVOLUTION

Decay The West’s preoccupation with material wealth and economic growth is a sign of its moral decadence and spiritual poverty. The recent history of the West is a tale of moral decline, in which those robust virtues needed to build a civilisation have been slowly corrupted by materialism and complacency. 

Our nations have become geographical areas without purpose where our governing class, in Wilde’s words, ‘know the price of everything and the value of nothing’. The shallow Left who control our media and politics have abandoned the intellect in order to shelter in emotion. For them the greatest sin of all is disagreement, which they term ‘hate’.

DECLINE AND FALL

There are many good and godly men and women in the Church of England who simply want to worship and serve God as best they can in the way their parents did. There are ministers whose preaching and teaching has enriched us and whose books Christians read with profit. Such Christians have been betrayed by their denomination.

Sadly today the CofE, an institution which has been of inestimable benefit to Christians across the globe, has been captured by woke ideological extremists who appear determined to set the Church on a course leading to gross doctrinal error and institutional suicide. All this with the support of the liberal bishops and the middle-of-the-road clergy.

LIVING IN AN ALIEN WORLD Pt 2

How do we face life in a culture which is increasingly moving from indifference to the Christian faith to outright opposition? A world where orthodox Christians have less and less trust in the institutional mainstream church? The question we must face is how do we live faithfully as a small minority in an environment which is sometimes antagonistic, sometimes friendly, but always alien?

In ‘The Benedict Option’ Rod Dreher, as an Orthodox Christian, found his pattern in the lives of the saints, those Christians who lived the faith under fierce communist oppression. As someone steeped in Reformed theology I, like most of my readers, find my pattern in the Bible. In the inspired recording of the lives of those who faced a similar question: how to survive in an alien culture and maintain the faith.

PROPHETS OF FRAGMENTATION

In the West we live in a culture which teaches us to scorn what was once considered normal and to value and praise that which only yesterday was thought to be abnormal or even dangerous. Those things which once bound us together, such as love of country and tradition, are despised and those things which force us apart such as multiculturalism and the transgressive are held up as ultimate values.

Diversity is a good only when there is an underlying cohesion within society. A society which places the exceptional and divergent at the core of its identity is a society in the process of fragmenting. If we fail to celebrate that which holds us together we will inevitably split apart. Which is what is increasingly happening around us today. Yeats warned us that when ‘Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world.’

LIVING IN AN ALIEN WORLD PT.1

Most Christians live in blissful ignorance of the reality of Eph. 6:12 that in a rapidly re-paganising West we are in the midst of spiritual and moral warfare. This spiritual struggle around us is going to metastasise massively, and the only way to survive as Christians is to draw in deep to the faith, and to a community of the faithful, to take refuge in God and his people.

Toxic Environment In our post-Christian society, practices which once were the province of dubious characters and were conducted under threat of criminal sanction are now socially legitimised big businesses. There was a time when society saw it as its responsibility to protect people from such harms through bans or restrictions and by the power of social condemnation. Those days are long gone. What was condemned is now celebrated, and our government is a major player.

A FAITHFUL REMNANT

On Life Support Recently a friend, a leader in his denomination, recounted an experience he had in hospital. In the next bed was a gravely ill elderly man. One morning while being given a bed bath he collapsed. The nurse repeatedly pressed the alarm bell to summon help. The alarm didn’t function. The nurse began calling for help. My friend jumped up, rushed into the corridor and called a nurse from the nurses’ station. Within a couple of minutes the ward was flooded with nurses and doctors. A crash cart was wheeled in as they tried to resuscitate the patient, but without success. The elderly man had died.

Any dispassionate examination of the health of the institutional church in the UK today would have to admit that it is on life support and the prognosis is bleak. The symptoms are all there, my friend said; ‘we see slow decline, congregations dissolved, small, faithful groups of believers labouring for the Lord, but minimal conversion fruit, a dearth of younger families and an ageing profile of church membership.’

A BLOCKHEADED INTERVENTION

The wokes of the UK should be down on their bended knees thanking whatever it is they worship for Lee Anderson MP. With one clumsy statement he got them off the hook. By saying that Sadiq Khan, the Muslim mayor of London, is ‘controlled’ by Islamists, he managed to refocus the debate. What had been under discussion was the effect of Islamists in our midst threatening Parliament and browbeating MPs. There was a chance, however small, that we might get some serious discussion of one of the major problems facing Britain today.

Lee Anderson

That chance vanished as soon as Anderson clumsily inserted himself into the debate like a bulldozer in a glass factory. Now the progressives had the perfect opportunity to go overboard about ‘Islamophobia’, and they grabbed it with both hands. Broadcast and print media overflowed with condemnation of ‘Islamophobia’. One could almost hear the sighs of relief in the corridors of the BBC as they dropped discussion of threats to Parliament and re-focused on Anderson’s hurty words. Conservative politicians rushed to prove their right-on credentials by condemning Anderson, not for his inept intervention, but for ‘Islamophobia’. Anderson had the whip removed and was cast out into the political wilderness.

APPEASMENT PAYS A PRICE

Fear In Parliament On Wednesday it came home to roost. What the public have known for years, Parliament has now experienced. We have witnessed the Speaker of the House breaking parliamentary convention because of security threats to MPs from Muslims. We cannot avoid the truth: MPs are in fear of Muslim mobs and are voting accordingly. The time for soft words is long gone and we must speak clearly.

The Guardian reports that the Labour leader Sir Keir Starmer warned Speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle ‘that Labour MPs’ security was at risk. With hundreds of protesters congregating outside parliament, they worried worse might be to come’.

A HERO FOR OUR TIME

Alexei Navalny, one of the heroes of our time, died in a prison camp of Vladimir Putin, one of the villains of our time. Many thousands of words have been written in the West about the death of Alexei Navalny. But amongst the outpouring of outrage from the West, little has been mentioned about this remarkable man’s Christian motivation.

Alexei Navalny

Despite having been imprisoned on fictitious charges, released and then poisoned with Novichok nerve agent requiring treatment in the West, Navalny had returned to Russia. The 47-year-old anti-corruption activist and politician who had organised anti-government protests and had millions of YouTube followers suddenly fell unconscious after a walk in the brutal ‘Polar Wolf’ Arctic Circle penal colony. He died on February 16. 

LIVING UNDER OCCUPATION

Triumph of Progressivism As 1940 began, the French were confident. They were at war with Nazi Germany but they had a large navy, army and air force, they sheltered behind the impregnable Maginot Line, and their allies the British had sent troops. France felt secure. On May 10 Germany invaded and Paris fell on June 14. France was either under Nazi occupation or run by the collaborationist Vichy regime. The swastika, the emblem of the conqueror, flew over Paris.

Today the Pride flag flies outside many churches, sometimes even draped on the altar inside. Symbols matter, and this symbol denies God’s established order as revealed in Scripture and all that the church has taught concerning human sexuality for two thousand years. Instead it flaunts the great lie, that we can be as gods rejecting His having created us man and woman. Flying this flag is not a way of saying that LGBT people are welcome in the church: it is a way of saying that Christians holding to the truth of Scripture are not welcome. The only people attracted to the church by such a display are those who want to transform, even destroy, the church.

A SMALLL BAND

Responses The post ‘It’s Over – Prepare For The Future’ provoked interesting responses on the blog, where it was published elsewhere, and privately.  Perhaps the most perceptive response came in a personal email from Kathy Gyngell, editor of TCW Defending Freedom: ‘I think it is fundamentally about understanding humility – the understanding we cannot change other people, we can only change ourselves while never underestimating the impact that alone can have on others. 

‘I was thinking about Christian survival through the last “dark ages” recently myself and the role of monks.

‘It will once again be a small band of brothers (and sisters!) I fear. It’s hard. More hymn singing could help at a practical level – unifying and strengthening!’

CHRISTIAN GENOCIDE

Here in the West we Christians get ourselves hot and bothered about such matters of concern as whether we should attend same-sex weddings, women in leadership positions or the type of worship music we use. Elsewhere in the world church life is dominated by different concerns. In Nigeria, a member of the Commonwealth and the country with the largest mixed Christian/Muslim population in the world, the main concern of Christians is how to avoid being murdered for their faith.

Christians Buried In Mass Grave

At least 52,000 Christians have been killed in Nigeria since 2009, reports the International Society for Human Rights and the Rule of Law (Intersociety). Seventeen Christians a day were murdered for reasons related to their faith during the first half of 2020. According to Intersociety, roughly five million Christians have been displaced and forced into Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camps within Nigeria and refugee camps at regional and sub-regional borders.

IT’S OVER – PREPARE FOR THE FUTURE

Too many Christians in the UK are living with an illusion. Let me tell you plainly: it’s over. The days of being a Christian country have gone, and they are not coming back any time soon. It is imperative that we grasp this. Instead of pretending we are living in a pale imitation of the past, we have to work out how to live in the present and prepare for the future.

I pray (literally) that there might be a recovery of both church and nation, that the Holy Spirit will sweep through the land and we will have godly leaders in church and state. In the meantime, until God does this, we Christians have to get our own house in order. Merely doing what we have always done in the hope that this time it will work is to embrace failure.

TO BLESS OR NOT TO BLESS

WHEREVER we look, the church continues to get itself tied in knots over same-sex weddings. We have seen the Pope get the entire Roman Catholic hierarchy at odds with itself over whether or not they should bless same sex-couples. Pope Francis issued a Vatican document, Fiducia Supplicans, which authorises priests to give spontaneous, non-liturgical blessings to couples in irregular situations, which includes same-sex couples.

Pope Francis

This naturally has caused a storm within Roman Catholicism: it has been rejected by the entire Catholic church in Africa, while in Europe LGBTQ-etc activists within the church see it as a watershed moment in their struggle for full recognition.

PERSECUTION BACKFIRES

Growth Means Opposition When Algeria gained its independence from France in 1962  Articles 29 and 36 of the Algerian Constitution allowed freedom of religion and missionary work. As a result more Algerians came to know Christ. This encouraged others in their faith in Jesus and to share it with their family and friends. Some went on to have important positions in society, including in the government, but there was a price to pay. 

Gendarmes Lock Algerian Church

FROM HEARTBREAK HOTEL TO HAZBIN HOTEL

I’m old enough to remember the outcry over Elvis. The appearance of the hip-swivelling singer was for some a harbinger of the downfall of society. We saw the same reaction to the emergence of Beatlemania. I can remember Mary Whitehouse and her opposition to the cultural revolution of the 60s which swept the West. And I can remember the derision, ridicule and even hatred she encountered.  How we atheists laughed: ‘Those crazy Christians, just because they don’t like something they want to stop everyone else from enjoying it.’ 

Today the early 60s seem a time of almost idyllic innocence and few can seriously say Mrs Whitehouse’s slippery slope prophecy was wrong. Fast forward to 2024 and just about every social value of that time has been bulldozed out of the way: we live in a society where morally anything goes with perhaps the exception of paedophilia (for the moment), and those ‘crazy Christians’ can be arrested when sharing their faith or praying on the street.

A GOSPELPHOBIC CHURCH

Justin Welby, archbishop of Canterbury and captain of the good ship Anglican, having steered the ship onto the rocks is bailing furiously in an attempt to stop the vessel from sinking. His officers meanwhile can only give one order ‘Full steam ahead’. Meanwhile most of the deckhands have taken to the lifeboats or jumped into the cold cold water, deserting the sinking ship however they can. The remaining tenacious few of the crew left behind are frantically trying to persuade the officers to alter course and patch the leaks.

Can A Badly Holed Vessel Be Made Seaworthy Again?

A Shrinking Church Despite the crying need of the great majority of Brits to hear the unvarnished gospel. Despite the longing of those few continuing to attend services in the CofE for worship which connects with their lives rather than the concerns of the editors of the Guardian and Pink News. Despite all the evidence of danger to the church, the officers keep on insisting, ‘Those aren’t rocks, it is clear calm water ahead.’

UKRAINIAN ATTACK ON RELIGIOUS FREEDOM

It is possible to see Russia as an imperialist aggressor in Ukraine and believe that Putin is a totalitarian despot with blood on his hands, while at the same time being critical of the West for using Ukraine to bait Russia and of the Zelenskyy government for the way it treats political opponents. Despite the human tendency to see ‘our’ side as the good guys, it is magical thinking to assume that one side wears black hats and the other white hats.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy

When Volodymyr Zelenskyy unexpectedly became president in the 2019 elections, he immediately stated that he did not intend to interfere in the affairs of churches. But that was then. Today Zelenskyy faces real pressure, not just from the Russians but from political opposition from within Ukraine. As well as consolidating the television platforms under state control and banning opposition political parties, Zelenskyy is now going after the church.

HOW PROGRESSIVES GET MARRIAGE WRONG

Is Marriage Worth It? For the Christian, the marriage of a man and a woman leading on to the family of father, mother and children is the core unit of society. Therefore it is hardly surprising that marriage comes under attack from progressive opinion-formers. The question asked by progressives is: ‘Marriage brings a lot of harmful baggage that needs to be negated, overcome and defeated – is marriage worth it?’ From a radical feminist perspective the answer appears obvious.

This attitude is not confined to the ultra-woke. The broken marriage and the dysfunctional family are staples of modern drama and literature, and when a man and a woman do find happiness with each other marriage is rarely mentioned. When heterosexual marriage is mentioned, it is often portrayed as humdrum and tedious, something from which to escape into a more interesting life.

WHAT THEN SHOULD WE DO?

As we face another year, it is a good time to ask ourselves what our priorities should be.

A Sinking Society We cannot escape the fact that the United Kingdom really is post-Christian, and not only post-Christian, but post-liberal. Like the rest of the West, the UK has undergone a vicious assault on reason and tradition. What was once a liberal, tolerant society which sought to build communities has become censorious and intolerant with self-interest reigning supreme, resulting in a society where anything goes and nothing works.

It is possible to argume that the UK is post-liberal precisely because it is post-Christian. Lacking the guidance and restraint of Christianity, liberalism has degenerated into progressivism, an ideological derangement motivated by contempt for the past whilst lacking a rational direction for the future. A coherent moral consensus within a well-grounded community is totally absent and as a result we witness moral chaos, a lack of creative thought and an increasingly narrow-minded society. In the space of a single generation, Western liberalism has degenerated into a cultural suicide cult.

A PAINFUL CHOICE

Last Sunday Catherine Bond and Jane Pearce, a lesbian couple who are both priestesses in the Church of England and who both have children from previous marriages to men, received the first formal blessing of a same-sex partnership in a C of E service. 

The Rev Andrew Dotchin who prayed over them claims that ‘Their love helps them to be more faithful Christians, and their love helps other people to understand that God is generous and no one is left outside.’

I FEEL THEREFORE I AM

We all ask, ‘Why?’ Why do some men think themselves entitled to compete in women’s sports? Why do people seem to hunt out supposed micro-aggressions in order to be offended? Why have institutions suffered a drop in membership? Why is there such an increase in identity politics? There are many subsidiary responses but the core answer is that when you turn your back on Christ you turn your back on more than Christ.

SEX MATTERS

Why is Western civilisation collapsing? The answer depends on whom you ask: every group and ideology has its own response. If only there was a disinterested social scientist willing to thoroughly examine many different cultures to see if there were any common factors in their decline.

Step forward J D Unwin, an ethnologist and social anthropologist at Cambridge and Oxford Universities, who a century ago painstakingly studied 80 primitive tribes and six known civilisations through 5,000 years of history. Unwin described his 600+ page book Sex and Culture as a ‘summary’ of his decades of research; a full disclosure would require seven volumes.

THE ACCEPTABLE PREJUDICE

Facing the alarming rise in anti-Christian prejudice and attacks throughout Europe, it is worth asking the question: Why do politicians and the mainstream media ignore this?

Don’t Mention The … This is the acceptable bigotry rarely addressed in the West. Marches are held in European cities to protest against Islamophobia and anti-Semitism, week by week tens of thousands march through our cities in support of Palestine, but when was there a rally in defence of Christians? On rare occasions the mass media will report on atrocities committed against Christians in countries such as North Korea and Nigeria, but are Christians, never mind the wider populace, even aware of the extent of anti-Christian prejudice throughout the West?

A CLEAR EYED CHRISTIAN

What happens when the world’s most renowned Muslim apostate and leading New Atheist confesses she has become a Christian? Rejoicing and praise to God? Yes, but tempered by a cold shower of scepticism.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The Background Born in Somalia, Ayaan Hirsi Ali lived in Saudi Arabia and Ethiopia before settling as a teenager in Kenya. Radicalised by a charismatic Saudi-funded teacher she became a devout Muslim who lived ‘by the Book, for the Book’. A member of the militant Muslim Brotherhood when ‘The Satanic Verses’ was published, she endorsed the fatwa against Salman Rushdie and took part in a public book-burning. Faced with a forced marriage she fled to the Netherlands as a refugee. She enrolled at  Leiden University and graduated with an MSc in political science.

UNHOLY ALLIANCE

The West is a civilisation in decline and is confronted by two major cultural movements determined to replace or fundamentally restructure it. We have witnessed our twin nemeses literally on the march since October 7 as militant Islamists and equally radical woke activists have led tens of thousands of the well-meaning on pro-Palestine and anti-Israel marches through our cities.

Militant Islam sees the West as decadent and is determined to supplant us. They are ably assisted by the metropolitan liberal elite who control our institutions, and their foot soldiers of the woke Left. They may seem unlikely bedfellows: the slogan ‘Queers for Palestine’ defies logic when homosexuals are thrown from tall buildings in Palestine. But different as they are, they have a unifying principle: a determination to undermine the culture of Western civilisation. Both ideologies are deeply hostile to individual freedom.

THE CHURCH IN A FALLEN WEST

The fourth and final part of ‘The State of the West’.

We are forced to acknowledge that from Sweden to Italy, from the Atlantic to the Black Sea, the West is in dire straits. It is easy to highlight the obvious features producing social breakdown: uncontrolled immigration, identity politics, intolerant progressivism, supine politicians, the list goes on and on. The results are depressing.

The West Can’t Hang On For Much Longer

When we say immigrants should integrate with the settled community, just what are we asking them to integrate with? Here in the UK we  lead the world in family breakdown. Families composed of married couples are decreasing and cohabitation and single parent families increasing, with consequent results for children in terms of education, delinquency and teenage pregnancy. The level of loneliness among the elderly is a national embarrassment. We are renowned for our rates of binge-drinking. If you were a Muslim immigrant, would you wish to integrate with this?

BARBARIANS AT THE GATES

The only good thing to emerge from the events of the past few weeks is that the moral bankruptcy of leftist progressives has been highlighted. Mobs of well-meaning ‘liberals’ have gathered to justify the carnage of Hamas, as though beheading babies ripped from the womb is understandable if done in the sacred name of a ‘rebellion’ to bring down the oppressor.

This is more than a natural support for the underdog, a David vs Goliath re-enactment. We are witnessing the ultimate outworking of the morally idiotic pursuit of ‘social justice’, the simplistic offspring of identity politics, in which the Bad People are those with power, and the Good People are those without it. In this scheme, the line between good and evil passes not through each human heart, but between identity groups, and it has infected every sector of our culture.

A DANGEROUS FAILURE

Second in a series looking at ‘The State of the West’.

Failure Those of us who can remember past conflicts involving Israel such as the Six-Day War (1967) and the Yom Kippur War (1973) can recall news clips from far away followed by conversations with family and friends admiring Israel’s determination not to be destroyed. What we don’t recall are mass demonstrations throughout the West with calls for jihad against Israel and support and justification for the evil acts of Hamas. What changed? The conflict is the same: it is the West which has changed.

‘Diversity is our greatest strength’ – we have heard this ad nauseam. But no one ever points out any verifiable benefits for all the West. Surely there must be something more than being able to eat khuushuur or boortsog in a Mongolian restaurant in Islington? Seen as a way of welcoming immigrants to the West without exacerbating tensions between indigenous people and newcomers, it is evident that multiculturalism has failed and is instead the cause of increasing tensions.

THE WEST IS FALLING

First in a series looking at ‘The State of the West’.

We may not like it but our culture is changing dramatically. The evidence is clear. Over the past few days thousands of people throughout the West have marched in support of Palestinians with the cry of ‘Palestine free, from the river to the sea’, a call for another Holocaust, the extermination of the Jewish people.

Pro Palestine Protestors

They are mostly young, idealistic, passionate and sincere, and few are Palestinian. Yet they want the extermination of the state of Israel: according to them Palestine must be Judenfrei. How did we get to the situation where our young people take to the streets with cries last heard on the lips of Nazi genocidal mass murderers?

WHO RULES?

We are told that to learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise. The British people now know who rules over them, and it is not the British people.

Pro-Palestine Demonstration in London

The appalling events last weekend when Hamas terrorists broke into Israel slaughtering any Jews they could find, infants and elderly, men and women, individuals and families, evoked revulsion across the world. Except in certain quarters.

MARRIAGE MATTERS

It seems blindingly clear that marriage, as understood in Christian teaching, benefits the whole of society and especially children. Yet our politicians seem afraid to even mention the benefits of marriage, especially for children, or take action to support the family. To the elites who get worked up about what pronouns should be used and whether or not biological men should be in women’s prisons, it seems preposterously reactionary to promote a traditional two-parent marriage.

Frightened Politicians Politicians know that as soon as they suggest that marriage may bring advantages in life they will be assailed with accusations of being insensitive, judgemental or bigoted. ‘My Mum was a single parent and she did a brilliant job.’ Anecdotal evidence may provide an emotional outlet but the hard statistical evidence shows most single mothers don’t do a brilliant job because every obstacle is in their way.

FOR SOME TERRORISM IS ACCEPTABLE

This Is Terrorism At the weekend Hamas fighters murdered and raped their way through southern Israel and kidnapped anyone from infants to the elderly to use as hostages. Hamas are even boasting of breaking the international conventions of war, posting videos of their terrorists beheading captured Israeli soldiers.

Noa Argamani Taken Hostage by Hamas Terrorists

Be in no doubt, despite the BBC’s insistence that these are ‘militants’, they are terrorists. Doctors who go on strike are militant, climate protesters who block roads are militant, gangs of armed men who rampage through villages entering peaceful homes to murder whoever they encounter are terrorists.

THE POWER OF WORDS

The Power of Words ‘Sticks and stones can break your bones but names can never hurt you’. We say this to our children knowing it to be totally untrue. Bruises quickly fade but the hurts of words can last a lifetime. Words are amongst the most potent tools there are: for building up and tearing down nothing quite equals the power of language.

Words are vitally important to the Christian faith. Creation itself begins with the repetition of words which bring everything into being: ‘God said, “Let there be . . .” and there was.’ God the Son, the One who shows us the reality of God, is introduced as the living Word: ‘In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.’ (John 1:1)

BRAND – THE SYMPTOM NOT THE DISEASE

The bigger truth behind the recent Russell Brand furore is that Brand is a symptom and not the disease. We have created a society which is openly degenerate and is proud of the fact.

Russel Brand

Without absolving Brand of any personal blame, society is complicit in what has happened: our society expects and condones such behaviour. Sexual misdemeanours are reported as big news with wall-to-wall coverage because that is what our society wants; it sells newspapers and gets viewers eagerly switching on to participate vicariously in the latest scandal.

A BACKDOOR BLASPHEMY LAW

Common Sense Something rare happened this week: I turned to Richard Dawkins for a dose of reality.

Richard Dawkins

When Dawkins writes on science he is clear, precise, almost lyrical; unfortunately when he turns to philosophy he sounds like a know-it-all fourth-former, and when he touches on theology you could get greater insight and depth from your congregation’s Sunday School.

HEADLESS CHICKENS

The Wilko of Religions Way back in 1867 Matthew Arnold wrote: ‘The sea of faith was once, too, at the full … But now I only hear Its melancholy, long, withdrawing roar.’ The tide has been going out ever since and the withdrawing roar has become a whimper until today Christianity in the UK is, according to many, fading away like the Cheshire cat.

According to the Office of National Statistics the Christian population in England and Wales fell from 59.3 per cent in 2011 to 46.2 per cent in 2021. Meanwhile, in the same decade the Muslim population grew  from 4.9 per cent to 6.5 per cent, and the Hindu population grew from 1.5 per cent to 1.7 per cent. 37 per cent of respondents said they followed no religion at all.

A CHRISTIAN DEMOCRACY

During the recent break in posting we visited Budapest, and were left with some remarkable memories. A beautiful city with a terrible past, and not only from the dreadful Soviet days. Below the imposing Parliament building is a row of metal shoes commemorating the Jews who were lined up, forced to remove their shoes, and shot dead into the Danube by the fascist Arrow Cross militia in 1944.

We were there for the World Athletic Championships which were worth the journey alone. There was the fascinating duel in the women’s pole vault resulting in two gold medals, and Femke Bol’s imperious domination of the women’s 400 metres hurdles. Seeing Edinburgh’s Josh Kerr win gold in the 1,500 metres, beating hot favourite Jakob Ingebrigtsen into second place, was special.

JESUS IS NOT ‘NICE’

I am about to take a break, but I will be back in September. Meanwhile here is an article previously published in TCW Defending Freedom.

Traditional Christians have become used to being told we are psychologically damaged goods. With every attempt to uphold traditional Church teaching, we are assured that we are homophobic, Islamophobic, xenophobic and have just about every other kind of irrational fear possible. This is par for the course when it comes to society in general – that there can be a gulf between the world and the Church should come as no surprise.

More interesting is when unbelievers, who have as much understanding of theology as I have of equine psychology, attempt to define who is and who is not a Christian. ‘How can you claim to be a Christian if you believe: in restricting immigration, that the election of Trump is not ‘an existential threat to humanity’, that the NHS is not the established religion of the UK etc., fill in the blank from your own experience.

WILL THE REAL COUNTER-CULTURE PLEASE STAND UP

Foot Soldiers of the Elites We are experiencing cataclysmic social changes: the erosion of national culture, entrenched left-wing control of institutions, and the rejection of sexual difference. These social, intellectual and moral changes were never asked for by the people but were driven by a tiny minority of metropolitan elites aided by foot soldier activists. Although they see themselves as bold fighters for freedom and speakers of truth to power woke activists are merely tools of the establishment.

Greta Thunberg, activist and useful tool of the woke elites

Some, like Greta Thunberg, direct their arguments to national and international leaders. She turns up at the UN, meets political leaders, has an audience with the pope and gets nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She is lauded, and her every word listened to. Thunberg is pushing at an open door as our elites are already committed to the climate change agenda. She has achieved nothing and is little more than a compliant puppet of the elites, lauded by the media and used to push their programme.

THE END IS NIGH

An Existential Conflict

It’s difficult to believe, but at one time left-wing politics involved serious discussion by serious people about serious topics such as the nationalisation of industry, union rights and working conditions, or the creation of new towns and transport links. Earnest people got into the complexities of big issues. Today woke left-wing politics seems to embody catastrophic reactions to every cause.

If you don’t think a woman can have a penis, you are murdering trans children. If you drive a petrol car, you are causing the oceans to boil. If you don’t want biological men to compete in women’s sports, you are participating in genocide. These may be crazy, but are reactions we have all witnessed in the media.

Reason has fled and the woke brook no debate because all opposed to leftie woke campaigns are ipso facto wicked, hateful people who want to drown polar bears, put drag artists into zoos and re-establish apartheid. Every issue is an eleventh-hour conflict between the woke forces of good and the monstrous evil of normality.

THE ANTI-CHRISTIAN NEW INDIA

IT TOOK the video of a horrific attack on two women to bring the world’s attention to the persecution endured by many of India’s Christians.

Demonstrators hold a banner during a rally in solidarity with the Christians of Manipur state, in Ahmedabad, India, Sunday, July 23, 2023.

The video captures the harrowing ordeal endured by the women in Manipur state in the north west of India on May 4. They were paraded naked while a mob of 80 to 100 men molested and beat them mercilessly. The younger of the two, aged only 19, was gang-raped in front of the enraged mob.

FROM SAFE REFUGE TO PERSECUTION

Ongoing Persecution At one time Pakistan was seen as a safe refuge for Christians. No longer. Today Pakistan is one of the leading persecutors of Christians in the world. According to Open Doors, Pakistan is seventh on its Watch List. Christians in Iran and Afghanistan face less persecution than the Christians of Pakistan.

Nine were killed when Muslim militants attacked Bethel Memorial Methodist Church in Quetta

Cases such as that of Asia Bibi, who was sentenced to death under Pakistan’s notorious blasphemy laws, are well known. Mostly unreported in the West by a media which has little interest in persecuted Christians, prejudice and persecution are endemic throughout Pakistan.

HOW JESUS GOT IT WRONG

We shake our heads in bewilderment at a world where everything seems turned upside down. Wrong has become right, equal opportunity has become racism and justice has become unjust. At one time liberals accused Christians of believing in a ‘sky fairy’ of our own imaginations. Today progressives deny science and believe that men can become women by wishful thinking. 

DON’T DRAW BACK

Christians have to confront the issue of transgenderism which, especially in its more extreme form, is the latest front in the culture wars surrounding us. We should be clear that this movement, which is very influential and has the power to shape society, is utterly unbiblical and is harmful to both adults and children. 

Transgenderism has even overtaken and dominates the other parts of the LGBTQ etc movement with otherwise staunch feminists and lesbians being dismissed and attacked as TERFS or trans-exclusionary radical feminists. The recent Pride month is replete with examples of transgender activists excluding homosexuals and lesbians from their marches because they believe the science and understand that you cannot change your sex. 

We should realise that whenever we publicly reject the ideology of this movement we will find ourselves under attack. There is no need to draw back from confrontation as despite being powerful it is vulnerable to reason and the Bible.

THE CHURCH THAT DIED

The church must ‘change or die’, or so say progressive Christians. The core of their argument is that if the church resists the demands of the modern world it will be doomed to irrelevance.

This might have some force if the evidence bore it out. However, those denominations which have gone the furthest with the progressive programme have seen a fatal decline in numbers of worshippers and clergy, along with a distortion of liturgical practice.